Arabian medicine : being the Fitzpatrick lectures delivered at the College of physicians in November 1919 and November 1920 / by Edward G. Browne.

  • Browne, Edward Granville, 1862-1926.
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Arabian medicine : being the Fitzpatrick lectures delivered at the College of physicians in November 1919 and November 1920 / by Edward G. Browne. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    contemporary of the Prophet Muhammad, who had completed his studies at the great Persian medical school of Jundi-Shapur, and who had the honour of being con¬ sulted on at least one occasion by the great Persian King Khusraw Anusharwan (the Kisra of the Arabs and Chosroes of the Greeks) who harboured and protected the Neo-Platonist philosophers driven into exile by the intolerance of the Emperor Justinian. An account of this interview, authentic or otherwise, fills a couple of closely-printed pages of Arabic in Ibn Abf Usaybha’s Classes of Physicians, and the substance of it is given by Dr Lucien Leclerc in his Histoire de la Mddecine Arabe. It consists almost entirely of general hygienic principles, sound enough as far as they go, but of little technical interest. A certain tragic interest attaches to Nadr, the son of this al-Harith1, who like his father seems to have had some skill in medicine and a Persian education. This led him to mock at the biblical anecdotes contained in the Quran, these being, he did not hesitate to say, much less entertaining and instructive than the old Persian legends about Rustam and Isfandiyar, with which he would distract the attention and divert the interest of the Prophet’s audience. Muhammad never forgave him for this, and when he was taken prisoner at the Battle of Badr—the first notable victory of the Muslims over the un¬ believers—he caused him to be put to death. Of the Prophet’s own ideas about medicine and 1 My learned friend Mirza Muhammad of Qazwm, after reading these pages, has proved to me by many arguments and citations that Nadr was not, as Ibn Abi Usaybi‘a asserts, a son of al-Harith ibn Kalada, the physician, of the tribe of Thaqif, but of al-Harith ibn ‘Alqama ibn Kalada, a totally different person, though contem¬ porary.